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a dollar bill.
    â€œThis has been marvelous, just marvelous. I must tell my daughter. Her children would love this. They’re in Chicago, you know. Don’t get west very often.” The postcards in her hand hovered over a huge open purse, like hawk wings over a nest. Suddenly they plunged inside and her hand escaped just as the purse snapped shut. “But maybe with these pictures I can get them to come. We could drive down from Butte, make a day of it. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
    â€œIt beats Chicago. I’ve been to O’Hare,” the ranger said.
    â€œO’Hare!” The woman glanced at the ceiling with a smile, crossed herself, spun around, and moved gradually away. The ranger picked up his pen, but I waited. I could tell from the music the slide show was almost over.
    â€œThe ceremonies,” I said. He held his pen up like an artist’s brush. Now the question was in his eyes: how can I trust what I tell you to be safe? Perhaps I have said too much already.
    â€œWe don’t know much about the ceremonies, just that they happen.” We both looked into the air, not at each other. We looked into a box of wind from another time, a box suspended between us, a wind blind to his uniform and my traveling clothes, a box of storm air where the real voices resided and centuries made a number with no meaning. I asked the inevitable question.
    â€œHow do you know about the ceremonies? Is there evidence left at the site?”
    He looked hard at me, then away. In the auditorium, the little motor whirred to pull curtains aside from the west window. “In certain places,” he said, looking toward the auditorium door, “they leave ribbons hanging from the trees.” The door opened, and the woman came out before her man. The skin around their eyes was pale. In one smooth motion, they both put on their sunglasses.
    On the trail to the battle overlook, the sharp-toed print of a doe’s hoof was centered on the print of a woman’s spike-heeled shoe. The woman came yesterday, the doe at dawn. I stepped aside, leaving that sign in the dust.
    But where were the ribbons? Now hunger-vacancy sharpened my sight instead of dulling it. Wind stirred every pine limb with light, green urgency flickering in the heat, flags of color calling every tree a monument. Ribbons? Ceremony? The wind was hilarious and sunlight a blade across my forehead. All along the trail, numbered stakes held cavalry hats of blue-painted wood to mark known positions where soldiers suffered or died. On the high ground above the trail, stakes painted to resemble the tail feathers of eagle marked the known positions of Nez Perce snipers who held the soldiers pinned down all through the afternoon. Feather Feather. Hat Hat Hat. Feather. Tree. Wind. Straw-palebrochure in my hand. Brochure folded into my pocket. Vacancy. Tree. Wind. Ribbon.
    Far uphill, at mirage distance, a ribbon shimmered orange from a twig of pine. Off-trail, pine duff sank softly beneath my feet. Trees kept respectfully apart. Earth sucked dry by roots from other pines made them scatter. A gopher had pushed open a hole, and cobweb spangled the smallest dew across it. Then the climb thinned my attention to one small spot of color the wind moved.
    Orange plastic ribbon crackled between my fingers—the kind surveyors use to mark boundaries. Not it. Not the wisdom of the place. Not the secret her sunglasses obliterated, not the message that family from Iowa went home without. Not the secret the ranger guarded, then whispered.
    A girl’s voice spoke from the grove: “The Nez Perce had only ten snipers on the high ground, but the soldiers weren’t sure how many were there.” She stopped and looked about, then led her parents and sister on along the trail, reading to them from the brochure in her hand. Somehow, she did not stumble, and they padded away through their little flock of dust and disappeared toward the river. A bird’s